We just received an invite from Samsung Electronics America to “Save the Date” for a major Galaxy announcement. This business division is not to be confused with Samsung Telecommunications America that handles mobile phones.
What could it be?
We are hoping the Samsung Galaxy Camera lands, but it will likely be a tablet or TV.
SAVE THE DATE
August 15, 2012
10:00AM EST
Please join Samsung Electronics America for a major announcement and unveiling of the newest GALAXY device. An exclusive press conference will take place where full details will be disclosed.
You may have heard of the world’s thinnest Android phone, the Oppo Finder, when the company put it up for pre-order last month. At just 6.65mm, the company also wanted to show off how tough the device is, and it recently did so by using it to hammer nails into a piece of wood. We would not recommend doing this with any smartphone. Nevertheless, at $393, Oppo Finder packs some decent specs with its 1GB of RAM, a dual-core 1.5GHz processor, Android 4.0, and 4.3-inch Super AMOLED Plus display.
Instead of going for an obvious attack on the iPhone, like in the past, Samsung is opting for ads that actually focus on the features of the its latest flagship Galaxy device. In Sammy’s latest three Galaxy S III ads (above and below), the company focuses on content-sharing capabilities made possible through the device’s AllShare features.
So, someone stole your AT&T Android smartphone—now what? Well, AT&T plans to début a new system July 10 for blocking any stolen device.
According to The Verge, which cited a trusted source, the system will block access to voice, data, and SMS should a smartphone or tablet be swiped. The account will remain “intact,” as the publication noted, to avoid the “inconvenience of a full SIM block”:
The company sent a message [above] to customer service representatives on Wednesday advising them of the change. According to the guidance, AT&T will compile a “blocklist” of stolen devices and service will be automatically suspended “if any attempt is made to use a device that is stored in the blocklist.” The only way to add a device to the list will be by contacting a customer service representative directly, and users with remote data wipe apps will be required to activate them before suspending their device, to “prevent access to their personal information.”
AT&T will not have a directory of blocked phones, but a customer who requests a block may also remove it later. Therefore, the company will likely keep a record of blocked devices corresponding with customers.
Current Verizon customers can upgrade, but new customers must choose a Share Everything plan. Verizon is scrapping the family plans and individual tiered plans for incoming subscribers, because the new options provide unlimited talk, unlimited text, and shareable data with pricing based on how much data is consumed.
Unlimited plans are not profitable for Verizon, which stopped offering unlimited data last year, due to growing smartphone usage clogging the carrier’s pipelines. The new standard is quickly becoming 4G LTE, so Verizon is likely trying to capitalize on every bit of data funneled through its network.
Verizon’s new strategy is the first of its kind in the U.S. It notably allows users to share data with up to 10 devices through a single account, but users can also fly solo with plans starting at $30 for 2 GB of data.
According to a report from AllThingsD, Verizon Wireless will soon change the way it charges customers for cellular/data plans in a major way. Rather than charging customers for phones calls or messages sent, the report claimed Verizon would charge “almost exclusively based on how much data” is consumed. The new “Share Everything” plans will also be the first in the United States that allows users to share their data with up to 10 devices through a single account:
The plans, known as “Share Everything,” allow users an unlimited number of calls and texts and also allow data usage to be pooled among up to 10 devices on one account. With the move, Verizon becomes the first U.S. carrier to offer the ability for customers to share a bucket of data across multiple devices.
AllThingsD noted that AT&T also has plans for shared data options, but it did not provide more details. As for Verizon’s new plans, which will apparently kick-in June 28, the report explained the cost of the data plan and pricing metrics based on a per-device fee. In other words, you will have to pay roughly $40 per smartphone ($10 per tablet), and then opt for either a $50 1GB data plan or a $100 10GB plan. While the report claimed the new pricing should not impact the cost of plans for users who continue consuming the same amount of data, it is clear that those signing a new plan for a single smartphone are getting a bit less for their money:
With Samsung’s official unveiling of its next flagship smartphone earlier this month, we are now getting some insight into the Galaxy S III’s battery life courtesy of GSM Arena. The publication took the I9300 Galaxy S III, and its 2100 mAh battery, and put it to the test in a number of benchmarks. The results included: 10 hours and 20 minutes of continuous talk time with the display off; 5 hours and 17 minutes of web browsing; and, over 10 hours of continuous video playback. As you can see from the images of the results above, the S III was just behind Motorola’s Droid Razr Maxx on video playback and talk time. However, web browsing puts it at No. 14 behind competitors thanks to its AMOLED display.
The report explained that with the device’s stand-by endurance rating of 43h, you would “need to charge the monstrous smartphone once every 43 hours if you do an hour of 3G talking, video playback and web browsing per day.” Expand Expanding Close
Samsung launched its Galaxy S III today with a few new software enhancements including an “S-Voice” feature that many are comparing to the iPhone’s Siri. Another new feature is called “Pop up play.” It allows you to run picture-in-picture video. The feature lets you play video in a smaller window that floats on top of the UI, which allows you to multitask while continuing to watch. You can see Pop up play in the video above at 1:48.
Samsung just unveiled the Galaxy S III in London, and the new smartphone boasted a ton of new features, such as “S-Voice.” The built-in feature is Samsung’s equivalent of Siri, but it does much more than Apple’s offering. It manages certain functions and is customizable with up to four wake-up commands. For example, set it to respond with the phrase “Wake up,” and it will automatically unlock the smartphone’s screen. The voice-control tech is also integrated with applications, such as the camera app. Just say, “Hi! Galaxy, picture,” and then say “Cheese.” Walah!—The picture is captured. Oh, and S-Voice can even control music.
Google is embroiled in a hullabaloo over allegations that it cropped personal data from millions of people during its Street View project, and while the Federal Communications Commission ended its 17-month investigation into the matter, with a partial exoneration for the Internet giant, The New York Times is claiming to have found the culprit at the center of the case.
Google Street View is a service highlighted in Google Maps and Google Earth that offers panoramic views of streets. It launched in 2007 in the United States and has expanded to many cities and rural areas worldwide. The project ambitiously maps the world’s streets with photographs while accumulating data about local wireless networks to bulk location-based searches.
It eventually became apparent that Google’s Street View vehicle also gathered unencrypted information like emails and Internet searches beamed from personal computers from within homes. When this came to light, the Mountain View, Calif.-based Company fingered a nameless engineer as being solely responsible for the action, which resulted in a F.C.C. inquiry. The search engine did not break any laws, the regulatory body found, but it did obstruct the investigation.
Although Google and the F.C.C. refused to confirm, the NYT published a lengthy piece yesterday that named Marius Milner as Google’s scapegoat. A former state investigator involved in another inquiry into Street View identified Milner as the engineer responsible. He is a programmer with an extensive background in telecommunications and Wi-Fi networking. As the publication discovered, Milner listed his occupation as “hacker” on his LinkedIn page (not working now), and wrote, “I know more than I want to about Wi-Fi” under the profile’s “Specialties” category.
Today, research firm IDC published its Q1 2012 report of top mobile phone and smartphone shipments worldwide. While Apple was able to post impressive growth with a high of 8.8-percent of the total mobile phone market (up from 4.6-percent a year ago) and 24.2-percent of the global smartphone market (up from 18.3-percent), Samsung was able overtake Apple for the top spot with a year-over-year change of 267 percent and 29.1-percent of the total smartphone market. Samsung also took the top spot of global mobile phone marketshare from Nokia for the first time since 2004.
Meanwhile, the worldwide smartphone market grew 42.5% year over year in 1Q12, as Samsung overtook Apple for the smartphone leadership position. Vendors shipped 144.9 million smartphones in 1Q12 compared to 101.7 million units in 1Q11. The 42.5% year-over-year growth was 1% higher than IDC’s forecast of 41.5% for the quarter, and lower than the 57.4% growth in the fourth quarter of 2011
In terms of shipments among smartphone vendors, Apple took the second spot behind Samsung up from 18.6 million units in Q1 2011 to 35.1 million in Q1 2012. Apple was only behind Samsung with 42.2 million units shipped, up from just 11.5 million a year ago.
The company does not publicly release shipments from Samsung, and IDC’s number of 42.2 million smartphones shipped during Q1 is significantly more than the 32 million estimated by IHS iSuppli just days ago. If IHS’s estimate were correct, it would put Samsung much closer to the 35.1 million devices Apple confirmed it shipped sold during the quarter.
TmoNews discovered a T-Mobile-branded Samsung Galaxy Note, and then posted an entire gallery of pictures (above). There are no confirmed details on pricing or a release date as of this time. However, keep checking 9to5Google for more.
As of the latest research from Nielsen, we know the United States smartphone market has quickly become an iOS/Android duopoly with 90 percent of devices on either one of those platforms. While smartphone usage in Japan is still at 1-in-5 mobile phone owners, new numbers from comScore today show Japan’s smartphone market is also quickly becoming dominated by Apple and Google. To be specific, 95.6-percent of smartphones in the country are Android or iPhone, and Apple has outgrown Google in the last three months while Android’s share remains steady.
T-Mobile’s launch of the HTC One S should be seen as the first real phone benchmark for 2012. That is good because 2011 was a bad year for both T-Mobile and HTC.
We have a bold new generation of devices from a beaten up manufacturer on a carrier that is just now emerging from the AT&T merger/breakup.
Without even turning the One S on, you will immediately marvel at the hardware. It is an incredible 7.8mm thin, which is significantly thinner than the thinnest Galaxy S2 or iPhone 4S. It is also 118g light, yet it is a metallic solid, owing to its unibody aluminum construction. With angular/rounded corners, it feels great in the hand and the dark Gorilla Glass on metal look is as nice of a design as you will find on any device. It has three capacitive buttons on the bottom, which we owe to the new Ice Cream Sandwich user-interface.
It is hard for me to imagine someone going into a T-Mobile store and coming out with anything else but this phone. Sure, the new Galaxies have slightly bigger screens, but this feels much more solid and has the same resolution. Moreover, last year’s HTC Sensation and Amaze feel like a grenades compared to the svelte HTC One S.
“The size of the worldwide Android audience and lack of current speaker options gives us a significant opportunity to introduce our products to a new group of consumers,” announced iHome’s Director of Marketing Evan Stein in a press release. “Our new SmartDesign products maintain the high quality and innovation that is synonymous with iHome.”
First up is the iC50 for Android smartphones. It is a $59.99 alarm/radio clock with a microUSB charging cable, stereo audio cable, and 3.5 mm plug:
Wake and sleep to radio (you can also wake to tone). Reson8® speaker chambers and EXB bass enhancement provide great sound that’s perfect for your music, games or apps. Works with iHome Sleep app (free download) to wake and sleep to your favorite music and advanced custom alarms. SmartSlide™ dock with custom micro USB cable for smartphone charging regardless of its charging port location/orientation. Also enjoy FM radio with digital tuning. A microUSB charging cable and stereo audio cable with 3.5 mm plug are included.
Ahead of its full quarterly report scheduled for April 27, Samsung Electronics today estimated its operating profits for the three-month period that ended in March. Estimated at 5.8 trillion won or $5.15 billion USD, that is nearly double the company’s results from the same quarter a year ago and up from the roughly 5 trillion won originally forecasted by analysts. While attributing the strong quarter to the Galaxy Note, the report fromReuters noted Samsung is “set to consolidate its market position with new products” over the next few months, including a “revamped Galaxy S” that will compete with Apple’s next iPhone: Expand Expanding Close
The first HTC Evo One reviews are starting to flood the gate before its official launch tonight and initial impressions indicate the device has both good and bad points.
An.droid-life.com said the smartphone is bulky, yet it boasts stellar-quality Beats Audio by Dr. Dre, Ice Cream Sandwich OS with Sense 4.0, and a 8-megapixel shooter and 1.3-megapixel camera worth drooling over.
Despite the praise, the reviewer noted the device “just feels like HTC’s same old thing.” The trimmed Sense and usual ICS experience seemed a bit ho-hum, but then he added that his time spent with the smartphone was limited so complete details are not possible at this time.
Google rolled out a handy new feature yesterday to its mobile search page on Android and iPhone smartphones that provides access to the list of past places-related search queries. According to a post over at the official Google Mobile blog, the new Recent icon “shows information about places you have recently searched for on any of your devices.” You must be logged in to your Google Account when searching for places (such as the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco). Web History must also be enabled. Users can swipe to the right to see more icons for other categories of places.
Next time you are heading to a place you have recently searched for, no need to worry if you can’t remember the address or phone number. Just go to Google.com on your smartphone and tap on the “Recent” icon.
This improvement also allows you to research places of interest on your desktop and view them later while on the go— without having to bookmark or email places’ URLs to yourself. One thing to keep in mind: This information about your previously searched places will be available under the Recent icon for about a day, Google said. This handy new feature is the first in a series of enhancements aimed at unifying search experience across devices.
Samsung today announced its latest addition to the Galaxy device lineup, the Galaxy Pocket smartphone seen on the right. As the name suggests, this Android 2.3 Gingerbread device easily fits into your pocket as it is just 12mm thin and weighs only 97 grams.
The diminutive phone packs a 2.8-inch QVGA 240-by-320 pixel resolution display, 832MHz processor, 3GB user memory (expandable to 32 gigs via MicroSD cards), built-in FM radio, and runs Samsung’s upgraded TouchWiz user interface. On the connectivity front, the Galaxy Pocket supports Bluetooth 3.0, Wi-Fi wireless networks, and 3G HSDPA 3.6Mbps cellular networks.
The included social features cover Samsung’s Social Hub and the downloadable ChatON cross-platform communication service. The Galaxy Pocket will be available in Italy starting from March and will gradually roll out to Europe, CIS, Latin America, Southeast and Southwest Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and China. No price points, model numbers, or United States availability information were released at press time.
If you still do not own an Android phone and cannot afford one of them high-end superphones, this is one of the best deals we have seen to date. Over at Best Buy, the Muve ZTE Score smartphone from Cricket Wireless can be yours in exchange for only $29.99. How sweet is that? That’s your fully unsubsidized price for a contract-free Android handset—down from its regular $69.99 price point. Keep in mind that $30 is what people pay to AT&T each month for their 3GB smartphone tethering plan.
Just because it is cheap does not mean it is worthless. Quite the contrary, the Muve ZTE Score runs Android 2.3 and has a 3.2-megapixel camera, 3.5-inch HVGA capacitive touchscreen, 4GB microSD card, and a little QWERTY keyboard with that nice clicking feel to it. It also does Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and 3G connectivity. It is your most affordable ticket into the Android world, even if you only intend on using it as a machine to run Android apps. Moreover, it is only 4-months-old.
ZTE Corporation wants one of the top three vendor spots in the global handset market by 2015, and the firm is challenging leaders in the market with a range of handsets and tablets announced at the “Mobile World Congress 2012” event in Barcelona.
According to a recent study, industry analyst Gartner ranked ZTE as No. 4 for world handset shipments in Q4 2011, and ZTE smartphone sales are accelerating faster than any other vendor—aside from Apple, of course.
“Our long-term goal for the Terminals Division is to achieve a compound growth rate of above 40 percent per year for five consecutive years from 2010, and to become one of the top three vendors in the global handset market by 2015,” said ZTE EVP and Head of the Terminals Division Mr. He Shiyou in a press release…
Entry-level prepaid Android phones sell for as low as $50.
Last year, the iPhone was the best-selling smartphone in the world, and Apple re-captured the crown for top smartphone maker in the United States last quarter with an estimated one-fifth of the market. While the original arrived at $499 (remember Ballmer’s reaction?), Apple would not hit the ground running until switching to the subsidized model with the second-generation iPhone 3G. Nowadays, U.S. carriers subsidize the full price of the device with an estimated $400, so those willing to commit to a two-year contract end up paying just $199 upfront for the hardware.
The trick worked and the iPhone went on the become an iconic device, but sales numbers did not replicate in various Southern European countries where carriers steer away from paying billions in upfront subsidies. As a result, prepaid Android phones are now undercutting Apple’s device and selling like crazy. Take Portugal or Greece, for example, where the iPhone last quarter accounted for 9 percent and 5 percent of all smartphones sold, respectively, according to the Wall Street Journal.
In the U.S., where contract plans and phone subsidies dominate, IDC says that around 90% of smartphone shipments over the past four years were for devices that cost more than $300 — despite the recession and uncertain recovery. In Italy, where prepaid plans dominate, that proportion was 67% last year, and in crisis-hit Greece and Portugal, only about 40% of the smartphones shipped in 2011 cost more than $300.
The article author Anton Troianovski said some European carriers are considering eliminating subsidies in favor of the more affordable pay-as-you-go plans. This includes major carriers, such as Spain’s Telefónica SA and Denmark’s Telenor ASA.
The price matrix of the unlocked, contract-free iPhone 4S.
It is very easy to make a snap judgment on the 5.3-inch-screened Samsung Galaxy Note. Yes, it is significantly bigger than the smartphone you use now. It even makes the Galaxy Nexus seem petite in comparison.
The dimensions of the Note put it somewhere between the biggest smartphones you ever saw and the 7-inch tablet form factor made popular by Amazon, BlackBerry, Motorola, Samsung, and pretty much everyone else except Apple.
However, the Note makes and receives phone calls, so it is a phone and it should be judged as such, right? End of story?
That is where you are mistaken. The phone functionality on the Note is a tertiary function at best. I see it as more like a reason to not carry a phone as well as the Note in your pocket. With that said, for a growing number of people, myself included, the actual “phone part” of a smartphone is very low on my list for what I want to do with the device in my pocket.
I make or receive only a few calls per day, and most of those are while I am at home/office with Google Voice and a headset or home phone. Therefore, other things rank higher on what I want to do with a device like this:
Maps are becoming the most used and most important feature on my phone, except for secondary review websites like Yelp, TripAdvisor, etc. I get all of my travel lookups from the Maps.app. I do almost all of my turn-by-turn navigation and lookups on this device much more efficiently with its huge display and fast network connection.
The Web Browser is the most important app outside of Maps. I would love the Note to somehow get the Chrome Browser before Samsung gets around to upgrading it to ICS. Alas, the stock browser is still unbelievably fast/crisp.
Gmail/Calendar/Contacts. You know…work.
AIM, GoogleTalk, GoogleVoice, and other instant messaging.
Social: Twitter, Google Plus Facebook, etc.
Netflix, Pandora, YouTube, and other Music and Videos.
Various other apps, such as my bank’s check cashing app, WordPress, Kayak, and a bunch of Angry Birds-type games.
Without exception, I can do any of the above better on a 5.3-inch 720P display than on a typical smartphone display. The one caveat: (As you can see from the gallery) moving my mid-sized thumb from one side of the portrait screen to the other is a bit of a stretch when using it one-handed. This does not turn out to be a problem very often, though, perhaps only 5 percent of my time. This is not a one-handed device.
Therefore, the Note is about tradeoffs: Amazing, huge display = better experience vs. portability. In my particular use-case, I am happy to make the trade. Here are the details:
The iPhone is great in many ways, but perhaps one of the best cases is in a medical emergency. KVALreported a 57-year-old Oregon man was suffering from a diabetic reaction while driving down a local highway. (Video link here.)
When two medical responders came to the scene and tried to assist the man, they ran into quite a language barrier. The man only spoke Chinese, but luckily, one of the responders knew to reach for his iPhone. He fired up Google Translate and was able to speak Chinese with the man to figure out his condition and give him the help he needed.
